


Beauté, Espoir, et Amour: Paradise Found

by Karalena Cullen (Karacullen23)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Original Work, Smallville
Genre: Black Pearls, Exotic Places, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 10:16:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1854346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karacullen23/pseuds/Karalena%20Cullen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, future fic. These characters are only loosely based off of batman characters. Bruce Gallio and his wife Harleen Quinzel-Gallio have just recently re-united. Bruce offers her a special gift for re-affirmation of their love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauté, Espoir, et Amour: Paradise Found

Beauté, Espoir, et Amour: Paradise Found

May 10, 2014 at 6:36pm  
By: Aurispenctric Ltd.

It seemed fitting. The necklace had appealed to some, dark, romantic part of him. As Harley slept, breathing softly beside him, he dangled the necklace to brush and play over the soft flesh of her bare back. A simple strand of Vintage black pearls tickled between her shoulder blades and down the dip of her back. 

 

Since being back home, her sleeping pattern had changed once more, back to what it was before most things had started. Deep and serine. She dreamed happily, and this one---was one she liked. 

 

Stirring lightly at the tickle of something cool along her naked skin, her eyes slowly opened, turning slightly to face him. 

 

Immediately, her lips turned up into a smile at the sight of him, the soft sheet slipping down her chest leaving her exposed as she gazed up at him. 

 

"Good morning sunshine.."

 

That smile. It was that smile that fueled his very soul. "Bonjour mon belle amour. *Good morning my beautiful love.* " He swept the necklace up her back, across her shoulder, and dangled it before her eyes. "Por vous. *For you.* " His face broke into a sunny, gooey smile.

 

Sleepy eyes glittered and she down right melted at the love behind the words. His face lit up like she couldn't describe. She felt the coolness at her back once more, until he was holding it up---her heart stuttered and stammered, then her mouth the shape of an 'O', she awed under her breath. 

 

"Oh comment vous me gâtez *Oh how you spoil me* .. Will you put it on for me?" She turned and lifted her hair so he could, flying high, knowing today would be the start of more better days in years.

 

"Je ne pourrais jamais vous gâter ma Reine *I could never spoil you my Queen.*" With a little half smirk, he sat up and propped himself up against the pillows. Reaching out he pulled her up and positioned her so that she sat between his outstretched legs, her back against his chest. He took the necklace in his hands and reached around her and brushing her hair to the side, he clasped the necklace securely. 

 

His lips brushed over the back of her neck, his hands sliding down her arms to take both of her hands in his own. 

 

"There are so many different legends about black pearls." His voice was a soft and almost musical melody at her ear. "They represent many things; eternal love, the fragility of man, of hope in a wounded heart..." His nose softly nuzzled into her hair, his breath warm on the back of her neck as he breathed her in. Her soft, golden hair... how he had missed it... missed her. 

 

"Just as a black pearl is born from a single flaw of nature, a grain of sand entering into an oyster's delicate flesh, the mother-of-the pearl covers up this interloper, caresses him and holds him, pressing him close until at last...rocked by the waves, he is reborn, dark but beautiful. Precious. Eternal." 

 

He moved so that his legs folded up and over her lap, securing her there as he shifted and pressed ever tighter against her. He brushed his lips to her neck, her throat, her hair, sweet little kisses that left him just a little breathless. "When I was about seven years old, my parents brought me with them to Sri Lanka. I remember I was so excited. My father was always traveling to exotic places, sometime's my Mother would join him and I always felt so lonely and sad. This was the first time I was dubbed 'big enough' to join them and I remember feeling... like at last I was /part/ of /their/ world." 

 

He smiled against the soft, warm flesh just behind her ear. "They took me everywhere with them, and it made me feel so special. But I was only a boy afterall, and the novelty wore off quick enough. On the third day, we went down into the dusty street markets. I remember it was so hot, and my feet hurt after what seemed like an eternity walking through the crowds on that hard, dusty ground. What was worse... I was bored to death! The market and the people and all the pretty, colourful trinkets weren't enough to hold my attention." 

 

"I remember... Indiana Jones had just come out that Summer." He chuckled. "My dad had taken me to see it, oh god... at least half a dozen times. I wanted to be just Indiana. Hungry for adventure in exciting, far off places. Just like this one. Well... I decided to slip away, intent on finding my own special adventure while I had the chance. We were returning to Gotham the next day and so far, the closest thing I had seen to excitement was a ride on a colossal, stinking elephant named Ramesha."

 

Bruce chuckled, his voice had grown wistful as he told his story. Lost in the happiness of a memory, one of many, that happened before his world fell down around him in burning flames. 

 

"Well needless to say, a seven year American boy in the bustling excitement... and the place was like a giant maze... so many little corners and paths and turns... I... got hopelessly lost. The further I walked, the more lost I became, until I was out and out frantic and terrified that I would never lay eyes on either of my parents ever again. I was so scared and my imagination was running away with me. I was envisioning what my life would be like as a hopeless orphan there in those dirty, hot streets full of shady characters in long, dark robes covering their ugly, scarred faces. My panic was forgotten as I was lost in this imagined adventure I had created in my head."

 

"It must have been hours I walked before my little feet couldn't walk anymore. They were sore and swollen and had started to blister and bleed from where the straps of my sandals had started to rub that tender flesh raw. Unable to take another step, I crawled into a little side alley and curled up in the hidden comfort of the shadows. I remember how weak and hungry I felt. I couldn't remember ever feeling so hungry in my entire life. My stomach hurt for want of something to fill it, and the sun was beginning to burn out in the sky. With the darkness, came the cold. The desert at night can be desperately cold, and already I was shivering in nothing but shorts and a thin tee shirt. The panic and terror I had felt a glimpse of earlier came back to me then. The reality of the situation hit me hard and I knewI would be lost forever. And it wouldn't be the adventure I had imagined but a cold, hungry, lonely nightmare." 

 

Bruce's grip on Harls tightened and he pressed closer up against her warm, solid body. He shivered and lay his head on her shoulder for a few moments before he took in a deep breath and continued. 

 

"There I was, cold and scared and crying my little eyes out thinking I was just going to rot and die there in that alley. I closed my eyes and could imagine how sad my Mom would be to lose me... she would cry rivers and flood all of Sri Lanka in her grief. Even dad might cry... I'd never seen him cry, but I was sure, he would cry too. "

 

"I was working myself up into straight out hysterics. Then suddenly, I felt a feather touch to my knee. I looked up from my knees to see a little, Sri Lankan girl, she was much smaller than me. She couldn't have been more than four, maybe five years old. Her big brown eyes were wide and she looked so distressed. I stared at her through my tears, wanting to say something. Wanting to ask her if she knew the way back to the markets. But I didn't know her language, and nobody I'd talked to all day seemed to know mine."

 

"We just stared at each other for the longest time. And then she shuffled forward and took my hand in her little one. She smiled. So big and beautiful and it was dazzling. She turned my hand and opened my fingers and her other little hand pressed something warm and smooth into my palm. 'Aḻa vēṇṭām.' She said, and smiled some more. 'Aḻa vēṇṭām.' and when she let go of my hand I looked down and saw what she had given me. It was a small, shiny, black pearl. So perfect and beautiful, and I was just simply... stunned out of my tears. When I looked back up...she was gone, and my Mother was rushing towards me with tears of her own shining in her eyes." 

 

Bruce was silent a moment, and smiled remembering how his Mother had called out to his father as she scooped him up into her arms and squeezed him so hard he thought he might break. Then his father's face, relief and amazement and then his arms too. Bruce himself had never felt more safe... more loved than he had there in both his parents arms in that cold alley. 

 

"It wasn't until a long time later that my dad found me laying out in the grass in the back yard. Before that pool and fountain were built, and the gardens put in, that whole back yard was nothing but miles and miles it seemed of the softest, greenest grass you'd ever felt. Well I was laying in the grass, looking up at the sky just watching the clouds swim by, and I was absently rolling that little black pearl over my face. My father asked me where I had gotten it, I told him the story of that little vanishing girl that night back in Sri Lanka and what she has said to me as she pressed the pearl into my hand. 'Aḻa vēṇṭām' He smiled, nodded, and then sat down in the grass beside me. Then he told me this story:

 

That in the beginning of time, there was the first man and the first woman ever to breathe on this earth. That they lived together in the most beautiful place on the planet, a great, lavish, and the most perfect garden. And they were happy there. Happier than any man or woman ever has been or ever would be again. Until one day, a serpent slithered into that garden and tricked the woman. He convinced her to something that she knew she wasn't supossed to do, and entreated her convince the man to do so as well. 

 

Well the gods were so angry at this, that they had given this man and woman such a paradise on earth, and they had disobeyed and betrayed them in the end by listening to the evil serpent. In their wrath, the gods banished the man and the woman both from their paradise, cursing them that as long as they shall live, they nor any of their children, nor their children's children and so and so forth, would never again set eyes on that garden again. That paradise was lost to them forever, and to all of mankind. And they would have to live with that shame and that grief for all of their days. 

 

Grief stricken, that not only had they lost their paradise for themselves, but also that their mistake was so horrible, that their children from which all of mankind would be born, would never get to see that glorious paradise and know the peace there. They cried.

 

Because the tears that they spilt, were spilt from their shame, their grief, their flaws... they were not ordinary tears. Oh no. The tears that spilled from her eyes were pink and white pearls; and the tears that he spilt... were small black pearls."

 

Bruce fingered at the delicate black pearls at Harls' throat. His voice was slightly hoarse and thick with emotion. "These are the tears of Adam. Who cried for all that he had lost. Because he was only a man. And man by nature has since the very beginning been flawed, and always would be. But even a flawed creature can create beauty, and in beauty there is hope.

 

My father smiled then and told me what it was that little girl had said to me.. she had told me 'Aḻa vēṇṭām... don't cry." 

 

He took in a long, slow breath and untangled himself from Harley so that he could shift to see her. The expression on his face was one of pain, but there was a quiet acceptance...even hope in his heart-breakingly blue eyes. He reached out and cupped her face in the palm of his hand. When he spoke again, his voice was soft, and deep. "Just like Adam, I'm flawed. I've made so many mistakes, made so many wrong choices, and even in trying to do right, I still manage to somehow keep damaging and hurting what I cherish most. We've been kicked out of paradise my love, and I know exactly how that first man must have felt." 

 

His thumb brushed softly over his wife's bottom lip, and his fingers trailed down her chin, her jaw, to flutter down her throat and dance at her chest before he fingered the pearls again. "These are my tears baby. The last tears I will ever cry. Because I am done with shame and regret. 

I may not be able to give you paradise... but I can give you something else just as timeless, just as precious... the heart and soul of a man... even if he is wounded and flawed, he...I... love you. Eternally baby. And that... is something perhaps truly beautiful. Our love is beatiful Harls. As long as that love endures, there will always hope. And that is the gift... that I am offering you."


End file.
